


Over and Out

by love2imagine



Series: New Beginnings [1]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Help and Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:03:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love2imagine/pseuds/love2imagine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have happened when Neal was kidnapped, and afterwards.  Approx. 15,550 words. Part ONE of New Beginnings Series</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over and Out

**Author's Note:**

> Characters and background belong to Jeff Eastin. Story and mistakes mine. First posting here...love to all the authors I have enjoyed!

 

 

## Over and Out

###  [love2imagine](http://archiveofourown.org/users/love2imagine/pseuds/love2imagine)

 

 

### Summary:

 

 

> Neal is incarcerated and then rekidnapped.

 

 

 

 

Neal gasped as the black cloth covered his head, and his arms were trapped by his side by men way too strong for him to fight. His wrists were zip-tied as they hurried him along, a second blindfold was tied over the first, round his eyes and round his neck. For a few seconds he almost panicked, but panicking wasn’t good for the mental processes, and he took a deep, rather musty breath and started to process possible scenarios…

 

_The first, and most obvious, is that Rebecca – Rachel! – is having me abducted and possibly killed. For revenge, or for leverage, or some crazy reason only a brilliant, murderous, lonely, desperate lifer would conceive. She was a loner before she’d apparently fallen for me, but she’d used Hagen. Perhaps now I'm Hagen #2? Considering how she’d terminated that relationship, it's not reassuring. ‘ One high velocity way to lose your lover!’_

He was tossed unceremoniously into the back of a van. Had to be a van, the metal floor was uncomfortably ribbed and the sounds reverberated. Probably a plain cube van, no windows, nothing for him to see if he did find a way to remove the blindfolds. And bloody uncomfortable.

A hand grabbed his foot and the anklet was cut and removed. Then another zip-tie strapped his ankles together, and a third linked the one round his wrists to the one round his ankles. He was shoved onto his side. Onto some dusty sacks or something. Bleah!

_Then there's Kramer. He made Rachel look like a PTA mom. There are so many unanswered questions about Kramer and his powerful and ruthless political friends. It could be someone I've worked with in the past. Not all those relationships ended happily, but this seems extreme after all these years…unless…_

_…someone wants my skills, has kidnapped me to paint some forgeries, bonds, counterfeit…none of this is good. Mozzie won't worry about me for a while! We've just come to an agreement, he'll just want to get on with his work, digging out his old information on the anklet._

The van turned another corner…he was trying to keep track, but they’d turned him around so often even before getting to the van that he wasn’t sure of anything. He tried to listen for sounds, but there were metal pieces in the van and they rattled noisily. He groaned. Peter, the only man who would tear the place apart looking for him, would be sure he’d run because of the ruling by the FBI, which was a good reason to run! Peter would think he’d gone, Peter was sympathetic, Peter might even misguidedly run interference for him and not do anything useful for days, or deliberately mislead the posse!

“Hallo?” Neal tried. After all, his tongue and his mind were his best weapons. Nothing. “Is anyone here with me? Who’s doing this?” He tried rubbing his head against the cloth, trying to loose the blindfold, but it was tied securely. Clever detail, to tie it round the neck.

_Great! I would much prefer being abducted by someone stupid, very, very stupid! If I have to be abducted at all._

“Hallo?” Neal tried again. If there was anyone, they were not talking. He rolled over and struggled to his knees. The van was moving quickly, and swayed enough to make him feel dizzy. He wasn’t good with blindfolds. They spooked him. Which may be the whole purpose.

Rebecca would be only too pleased to show him who was boss, who won in the end. _Who’s free now?_ Damn! Why had he baited her? Mozzie would have just quietly drifted out of her life, not antagonised the most dangerous single person he’d ever met. Other than Mozzie. But Mozzie was a friend.

He shuffled across the floor, not doing anything good to his knees, trying to find the stuff making all the noise. He leaned back and dragged the cloth he’d been pushed against. If he could muffle the sound…? Or if there were sharp edges, he might be able to saw through the ties. Or cut my wrists to shreds! Leave lots of DNA…how cheerful.

He had just managed to find the pieces of angle iron lying along one side of the van when it stopped rather suddenly and he pitched sideways and banged his head, seeing stars against the blackness. He said some bad words under his breath, and then heard the doors open. “Hallo?” he tried, but the three men – probably men – didn’t answer, grabbed his arms and hauled him out of the truck.

“Hey! Where are you taking me?”

“Shut up, or we’ll silence you.” The voice was male, deep, some sort of slight accent…Italian? Spanish? Neal found himself pushed down and banged his head again, and then there was a sudden air-change and he realised he was being closed into something even smaller than the van.

He yelled, struggled forward but came smack against the front of some sort of crate. Soon he was moving again, and it didn’t take him long to discover that the crate was about four feet cubed. There were some blankets or cloth on the bottom of the crate, which made him a little more comfortable. Surely if it was Rebecca, or Kramer, or any really nasty kidnapper, he’d have been lying on barbed wire or something?

_Unless Rebecca still thinks there’s a chance for us? Perhaps I am to be a sex-slave, locked in her dungeon…_ The thought, originally a jest to amuse himself, struck him as a horrid possibility. A sex slave, a forgery slave, a something slave…this couldn’t be good!

_Why can no-one approach me and offer me a position as their forger or pet artist, good salary and benefits, protection from the FBI et al, an estate on the Rhine…pretty French maids…a butler…? No, they have to throw me in a crate like a – a – table! But without good packaging. Actually this is like human trafficking. Only there’s just one of me, not a whole container load._

Whatever the crate was in or on started moving and the ride was far bumpier than before. There wasn’t much noise, the crate seemed to muffle it, and after quite a while there was noise, loud noise like a powerful motor or… Aeroplane.

_They’re putting me on an aeroplane._ Suddenly he felt truly panicky. _Would Rebecca throw me into the sea in a crate? Talk about Davy Jones’ locker! No, no, too complex and she doesn’t get to see me squirm...no, no drops into seas. Definitely not. Please?_

The crate was picked up, shifted round…from the sounds, including that awful beeping, a fork-lift or something…. After a while the crate was dropped a short way and Neal groaned and yelled, “Help! Help!” but the only answer he got was a thump as though someone had kicked the crate. More yelling produced nothing, and from the noise he thought it was possible no-one could actually hear him. Human cargo. He tried to listen, but though he thought the crate was being secured with straps, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of much. _If I’m flown out of the country, Peter’ll never find me!_

Neal curled up as comfortably as he could and tried to rest. Suddenly there was movement and he realised that he’d fallen asleep. He was stiff and uncomfortable and the need for water and a bathroom were both becoming urgent. He tried yelling again, banging on the side rather ineffectually with his shoulder. The crate was off-loaded and put on another vehicle and off they went again. His arms ached, his neck ached. He was tired and angry and sorry for himself. The air seemed stale. How long could he survive in a wooden box? How long did he want to?

When the vibrations stopped this time, the side of the crate was let down and he breathed deeply of the fresh air even through the black material.

“Hey, I need water, and I need a bathroom or there’s going to be an unfortunate accident,” he said, his voice sounding loud and strange in his ears. The zip tie holding his wrists to his ankles was cut, then the one round his ankles. Hands helped him stand and eventually he was almost carried along. The hard smoothness of the floor, the quality of the sounds and echoes told him he was entering a building. Down some stairs…he would have fallen if it wasn’t for the two guards, kidnappers, whatever.

He was taken along for a distance and laid on a bed. His hand-tie was cut and he groaned as he moved his shoulders. He heard footsteps retreating and a large and heavy, probably metal door slammed and locked. He struggled with his blindfold and eventually got it off. Everything he did hurt! He rubbed his shoulders and looked around. It was a room, bed, table, upright chair, fridge. Off this room was a bathroom, and he stumbled through, falling to his knees at one point, got to the room and used the facilities. Then he drank some of the tap water, which didn’t taste very nice.

Then he searched his prison. There was the metal door…wider than average, no hinges, handle or lock on this side, two sliding portions, one at about face height, one near the floor, both closed and immoveable. The bed was a single bed…a twin…the light switch told him he was still in North America. Well, somewhere where a wall switch was up when on! There were no windows. Half of the wall was concrete. A basement. The dry-wall above that, he discovered, covered concrete further up, there was no easy way to get out that wouldn’t show if they were monitoring him. He’d have to wait.

_Now Doctor Doom or Rebecca or Kramer or some evil someone will pipe a tinny voice into the room telling me I am at their mercy and to abandon hope._

But no voice. He would have welcomed a voice! He went to the fridge and there were bottles of water and some snacky things,but as he was about to investigate further, a noise by the door made him look over and a tray slid in through the open lower portion which promptly shut again. He went over and picked it up. Shepherd’s pie, peas, carrots, all hot and smelling delicious! A pot of tea, a pot of coffee, milk, cream, sugar. Plastic cutlery. Drugged? Hey, he didn’t care if the food was drugged at this point. He was starving! And if they’d wanted him dead, they’d have done it long ago!

He sat down at the table and ate. He considered the beverages. Did this mean that someone didn’t know his tastes? Not that he was averse to either good tea or good coffee. But if they wanted him to feel at home and secure, Peter or Rebecca would have just provided coffee. Mozzie would have provided coffee and wine. Who would provide tea? He wasn’t usually thrilled with green tea or herbal teas, though he would drink some of Mozzie’s concoctions at times, to be nice. But this was good, well-made, strong Ceylon tea, possibly Kenyan organic? It was good.

After finishing the food he put the tray by the door, banged on it three times and went back to the bed. After a few minutes the lower slide opened and the tray was removed. The hand that entered briefly was gloved, but almost certainly male.

“Hey!” he yelled from the bed. “Can someone talk to me? What’s going on?” But no-one answered.

He gave a mental shrug. He was obviously being observed, and good luck to them! He went into the bathroom, shaved with the new razor placed there and showered. When he returned wearing a towel, there were pyjamas – not silk, but soft, good quality cotton, all labels removed (the towels were similar), in his size, laid out on the bed. Soft pants, knitted tops and T-shirts and underwear were on the chair. His shoes were gone, but there were slippers and boat-shoes.

_Very prisonish._

He put on the pyjama bottoms, got a bottle of water and got into bed. Again, the sheets were clean and fresh, high thread-count but not luxury. The hot shower had eased his joint and muscle pain and he fell asleep relatively easily. There was no point in worrying…they weren’t treating him badly and they would tell him what they wanted when they felt the time was right.

Every time the food was left, he yelled for someone to talk to him, to let him out, to explain. He never heard any voice at all. If he lay where he could see out through the space when the slide was drawn back to push through the tray, no tray appeared until he had moved away from the door. He tried using the small mirror from the bathroom, with the same results.

The next two weeks followed the pattern. The food was always good and every time he showered the water and snacks were replaced. The second evening large piles of DVD’s and CD’s, in a wide range of tastes, a player that played both, speakers and a small colour TV (Chinese make, no help there!) were on a small table waiting for him. The next shower, a bookshelf with books appeared, classic novels, some he had already read and would enjoy reading again, some were new to him. There was a brand new Art History Book.

He took some time and studied all the books, CD’s and so on. There were no sales labels, nothing left to give a hint of his present location. The next night, an easel and prepared canvasses, sketch books, paints, brushes, everything he might need to create. All new, some Chinese, but good European pencils, charcoal, paints and brushes.

He considered faking the shower…he turned the water on and waited. No-one came in the room at all that night. Since they were giving him things he would ask for anyway, he obediently showered the next night and they out-did themselves! There was a treadmill and a newer piece of gym equipment with which he could perform a wide variety of exercises with different resistances. It folded and slipped under the bed when he didn’t want to use it, but when it was out … _I should stop showering! I won’t be able to walk across this place in a while!_

The next evening he tried turning all the lights off as though he was sleeping and waiting by the door, but though it was stygian black in there, no-one opened the slide and gave him dinner. At last he relented and turned the lights back on and sat on the bed. Dinner, steak and three vegetables, obviously re-heated, appeared. _So they have infra-red as well and know exactly where I am. Well, worth a try. Means I can’t try turning off the lights and digging through a wall…which may just lead to soil, then I’d have to dig a tunnel by morning…Pity about the steak. Think it would have been really nice when they cooked it for me._

They gave him nothing that night when he showered, and he imagined he felt some huffy disapproval from behind the door. After all, they had been unnecessarily generous kidnappers, and he was still testing them. He carefully crushed some charcoal as fine as possible with the bowl of a spoon and tried dusting the gem cases and various other surfaces for prints, the mirror, the bottles of cleaner under the basin. Not that he could keep them, but just to see. Not one print that couldn’t be accounted for by his own handling of some of the things. These people were careful. Having established that, he carefully cleaned up the mess he’d made. No point trying to preserve the crime scene.

The next night when he showered, his gifts were several Ott lights so he wouldn’t become depressed by the lack of sunlight, and they were also excellent for painting, giving true colours. Two standard lamps and one for the table.

_What next?_ Neal found he was becoming amused by this weird incarceration. Perhaps it was Rebecca…wooing him. That seemed more reasonable than any other alternative he’d considered. No angry FBI lunatic, or revenge-intent criminal from his past, none of the others would be so considerate…so, Rebecca. Unless Alex…no, she didn’t like him all that much, and Alex would not have been able to resist verbally baiting him. Sara…no, too law-abiding. Much, much too law-abiding. Even if she’d heard about the FBI’s double-dealing with him, she’d never have helped him unless his life was in danger…hmm.

_If my life is in danger, then perhaps Peter, Sara, Alex, June, Mozzie…any of them might have ‘put me protective custody’ till the killer was caught. But who’s trying to kill me (other than Kramer, Rebecca, old partners) and it comes back to the question: Why not communicate with me? Why the secrecy? And none of them would provide both coffee and tea._

Even if his captor was providing toys for his entertainment and amusement, it was still a prison. _The hamster runs on his little wheel, he dabbles at his sketches, he eats and sleeps and showers and shaves. He’s fed well, he could exist like this forever…but it’s still a damn cage! If they’re watching, might as well try dangling a few hooks in the water… I’ve been here too long. I’m muddling my pet metaphors!_

The next day he spent doodling and then he painted a small but hyper-realistic chocolate cake. He wasn’t the most accomplished air-brush artist (there being no great Dutch masters that used air-brushes!), but that would be the only way to make this more photographically-real oozy-thick-deep-dark-and-decadent. With lunch the next day appeared a large slice of chocolate cake. It was very good cake. He spent extra time on the treadmill and gym. It was worth it.

Now he had a rudimentary way of communicating. He felt a lifting of his spirits. More sketching. Much more. He painted a portrait of Rebecca. He’d done one of Kate a year after her death: her darkness, her beauty, his lack of understanding of her, his yearning for her. He could have painted Rachel, the assassin, the spy, the stalker, and it would have been darker still…but he painted her as the woman she’d created for him: intelligent, classy, gentle, naive, sexy. A blue-stocking with great legs and that teasing turn of the ankle. The portrait sat on the easel for three days while he pondered it and felt a yearning for the woman he thought Rebecca was that was stronger than any he’d felt for Kate.

_Most of the time I wanted Kate, I was free to find any girl. When I found Rebecca, my pool of available women, available and attractive to me and right for me was so close to zero that she seemed a gift from Heaven. Heck, my pool of women who would speak to me socially was pretty close to zero! When I told her about my anklet and she turned and kissed me…!_

Even after three days, no red-headed women, and certainly no Rebecca. Damn! He painted Alex and Sara and even Elizabeth. He enjoyed doing them, all so different. He used different styles and palettes and soon he was surrounded by beautiful – they were all beautiful – women gazing at him. No Alex, or Sara or Elizabeth appeared. Well, perhaps painting too many had put any one of them off!

“Not even a blow-up doll?” he demanded of the ambient air. He drew a soft and fluffy white-with-grey-points kitten playing with a ball of twine. Next shower, there was a little quilted igloo with the sweetest kitten – not unlike the one he’d painted – asleep inside. There was a litter box, litter, plastic bags and a scooper. When he picked up the kitten it - she - opened bright blue eyes and started to purr like a tractor. Or like what he imagined a very small, cute tractor would sound, since he wasn’t a very agricultural type.

“I shall call you Becky,” he told the little thing, who batted his nose with a soft paw. “And no hideously obvious puns, I promise. You will just join my cat-house.” He waved at all the female images watching them. The next day he piled the portraits against the wall. They were a little creepy, all so close together, all looking at him. _I have dated a bunch of strong, smart, quite beautiful, dangerous, hard women! What does that say about me? My mother wasn’t like that! I don’t_ _think! No! None of that! Do I want to be looked after or murdered in my sleep? Perhaps both!_

Now every meal brought a bowl and extra milk and cream for Becky, a bag of dry food the first day, and little treats in sealed clear bags marked in block printing CAT, in case he felt the urge to pop sardine-smelling teeny-tiny pink fish into his own mouth. The kitten made Neal’s narrow life quite a bit more complicated…it jumped into the shower, it tried to eat some paints, it did eat two sticks of charcoal, which made a mess but didn’t apparently harm the cat, it destroyed a perfectly good fan brush and chewed the handle off a liner brush. He had to be careful when using the gym equipment that he didn’t squash it.

But he felt so much better having another living thing in there with him, full of energy and life and ready to play any time it wasn’t sleeping peacefully in the middle of his bed. It had never returned to the igloo! He talked to it, not saying anything anyone could use against him. Just in case. Except they might be able to have him committed for talking so much to a so-called dumb animal!

_I wonder what would happen if I painted a rhinoceros?_

Painting a rhinoceros was a challenge. He decided on a black rhino…they were smaller. More aggressive, if he remembered correctly…zoo’s really weren’t his thing. He disliked the animal channels because they lured you into watching the cute little gazelles just so they could have some hungry leopard pounce on one and carry it off…not that he disliked carnivores, hey, he veered that way himself. _But don’t get me to love the thing and then kill it and make me find myself torn between the poor leopard cubs and the gazelle that will never have little gazelles of its own. The world should be nicer than that!_

His own little cat-cub decided to go crazy every few days and flew around the whole prison like a mad thing…up the curtains (no window, the curtains were just for effect) and down, under the bed on its back, ‘running’ upside down on the underneath springs of the bed, into the bathroom, into the bath and out, over the chair, across the bed, up Neal’s left leg and down his right, ending up at the top of the curtains again. Neal laughed so much for so long that his sides and jaw ached! He hadn’t laughed like that for years!

For three days after he’d placed his rhino painting in the place of honour, nothing. Then after his shower he found a plush rhino the size of a beanie baby on his bed with his clean PJ’s. Becky was eyeing it suspiciously. He picked it up.

“This!” he said, loudly, “is a very small, most likely female white rhino. Except mauve. That,” he pointed at his artwork, “is a full-sized male black rhino.”

However, that’s all he got to fulfil his rhino desires. And he didn’t have it for long. Becky decided it may not be big game, but it was fair game. She attacked it regularly, stalking it from behind the pillow, waiting, all suspense, her little bottom wriggling like a golfer’s and then pouncing, tumbling over the bed, under the bed, holding it with her sharp little front claws and doing kangaroo-kicks at it’s soft underbelly with her back claws. She used it as a teething toy and soon the poor rhino was less plush and more mush.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have called you Becky,” Neal said, observing the thing. “You are further endangering a threatened species, do you understand that? No, it isn’t a black rhino, but there aren’t that many white rhinos, either! You could have at least left it **_one_ ** ear!” Again he wondered if he was going to be set up as a lunatic. He didn’t really care. She really made his life worth living.

He stopped teasing his captors with undoable wishes after the rhino. He’d write down what he wanted… MORE BATHROOM CLEANER MORE PAPER TOWELS FISH FOR DINNER? and now and then, CAN I PLEASE GO OUTSIDE? WHO IS OUT THERE? The household requests were fulfilled, no response to the others. Not that he expected any.

His little down-down-down-down-strike-through marks on his sketch book passed the 30 days mark. And then forty. _Why don’t they just torture me, already? Or force me to do something? They are the nicest and calmest and most patient captors in history. Well outside ‘Man in and Iron Mask’. Are they just keeping me out of sight…perhaps this is to drive Peter insane! Or – or is it some criminal who wants Peter off his game and me not there to work with him because we’d catch him? Our team is almost invincible!_

He sat on the bed with Becky curled in his lap. This was the most likely scenario that fit the facts. So then it was someone who didn’t hate him, who wasn’t violent. Scratch the previous list! The trouble was, he had almost no information to work with. He needed to communicate with his kidnappers beyond requests for cake and fish and cats…

_The only thing I can do is to injure myself. If I …well, I suppose I can take the razors apart and slit a wrist…I’d rather it looked like an accident. That just looks like a ruse. Could I fall and hit my head? I’d have to make it believable, they seem to have cameras everywhere. I don’t want to misjudge it and really hurt myself because then I couldn’t make a break for it, or perhaps I’d be dead or unconscious, which helps no-one._

He decided not to eat. After two untouched meals there was a note with the next, careful block printing: YOU NO EAT, CAT NO EAT. YOU GET HURT, CAT GET HURT. Luckily he had plenty of treats and kibble for Becky, but that put paid to that idea. He imagined the note sounded as though it was written by a Russian, but that didn’t really help him, as almost certainly his kidnapper was quite well-off, and had hired help.

He wrote a note and put it on the empty dinner plate. IF I GET HURT IT WILL BE AN ACCIDENT. I WILL NOT HURT MYSELF. PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT? The last sounded a little like a plea, but he didn’t care. The little cat curled up in the curve of his neck as he lay trying to sleep and sometimes he could hardly breathe, and he was just so grateful to have the tiny, warm, affectionate thing near him!

_It is cruel and hideous not to let prisoners have even a plant or a goldfish, to have apartment complexes for seniors that won’t allow pets. If I was a billionaire I’d go around building pet friendly senior homes and orphanages and prisons! Or perhaps getting someone better qualified to do the building, work with the final owners, renters whatever on the plans…_

On the fifty-first night, he curled up and went to sleep. And he didn’t wake up. Well, he did, of course, but it was just vague, groggy feelings of being back in a crate, struggling to wake up and find Becky. It seemed like a nightmare…he could hear her mewing. But then darkness swallowed everyone and everything.

When he finally opened his eyes to see brightness…sunlight behind pretty floral curtains…. His head ached. He tried swallowing and his mouth was desert dry. He was in bed, but this wasn’t his prison, he wasn’t in solitary, he wasn’t…where was he? He lifted his head and groaned and a teenage cat leaped on his tummy with all four feet.

“Oof!” he said, catching her. “Becky! What the heck…?” She gave him wet cat-kisses on his nose and kneaded his chest, purring even more loudly than he remembered…or perhaps it was his head….

The door opened and in came a back…which turned round and it was Mozzie, carrying a tray!

“Mozzie! What the – where am I?”

“Hallo, glad to see you’re with us. Here, drink this. You were drugged!”

“I kinda guessed that.” He drank something that tasted like a mixture of fresh spring water and fruit juice and honey.

“You need to use the - ” Mozzie nodded at another door, presumably the bathroom.

“I – yes, but – could you help me? I feel as though I’ve just come off a boat that was on high seas for months! And I’m still lying down!”

Mozzie was always surprisingly strong. When he was thankfully horizontal once more, his head resting on a soft white pillow, he asked, “I was held in a basement. Somewhere… where are we?”

“Cornwall.”

“Cornwall, England? Oh. But how did I get here?”

“You were kidnapped.”

“By whom…who?” His head buzzed. “Who,” he decided.

“They were moving you…some goons, not the principal. We – er – redirected you.”

“Mozzie! You re-kidnapped me? Thank you.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

“No, even gave me a cat and a rhino.”

“Rhino?” Mozzie demanded, but Neal had drifted off to the sound of one happy little half-grown cat purring in his ear.

The next day Neal woke famished and ate and ate. Mozzie and the cat watched him with equally smug and satisfied expressions. Once he’d finished, used the bathroom and settled again, he demanded, “Who kidnapped me? And why? They never said a word, didn’t do a Proof of Life photo, didn’t cut off anything…thankfully…in fact, other than a few notes about starving the cat and things, I have had no human contact in fifty-something days! Was there a ransom demand? Did Peter think I’d run?”

“Um, to start at the end, yes. Then everyone thought you’d run, except me and June and Mrs. Suit, and then Peter thought you’d been kidnapped. Actually, there was no evidence of anything one way or the other. You could have fallen, hit your head, and pitched unconscious into the East River, or been mugged and thrown in a dump truck and never found…it happens in New York! They eventually found the tracking anklet…someone knew what they were doing and not only cut it but dismembered it and fried the chip so the GPS wasn’t working. That was a hint that you didn’t just run. Why bother with that?”

“So no ransom note? How totally crazy!”

“The anklet had a whole lot of fingerprints on it, all smudged. Yours were not on top. I told Peter and Hughes – yes, he came out of retirement, or as a consultant or some other governmental do-si-do to help find you – that you might have run after what the Bureau pulled, but you hadn’t because you would have gone with me. Somehow, that convinced them.”

“That’s nice. So where was I?”

“Winnipeg.”

“Winnipeg?”

“Well, about a hundred miles north of Winnipeg on a farm. They converted a pot grow-op into a new home for you.”

“They looked after me, I was just worried and bored. No wonder they weren’t violent! Manitoba! What was the plan for me?”

“Well, they probably kept you underground, literally, until the heat cooled. Then the flights out of the country wouldn’t be as closely monitored. There really wasn’t all that much push to find you – your sentence wasn’t that far from up, they were this far from releasing you other than the Evil Director Suit who scuttled that plan, and Hughes and Burke put a lot of heat on him and June went to the press and made some folks very unhappy. Big fuss down in DC! Heads will roll, or at least be lowered!

     “Anyway, by then I had some idea of where you were, and was about to rally the troops and they brought you out and put you on a truck and then I re-routed you. Someone is going to be surprised to receive a large wooden crate full of saw-dust and bricks wrapped in sacks instead of the world’s greatest forger!”

Neal chuckled. “So they were bringing me to Cornwall? Who’s in Cornwall?”

“We are. No, the flight was going to take you to Germany. I switched crates.”

“There was a crate full of bricks and saw-dust being shipped by air from Winnipeg to Cornwall?”

“Haha, no.

            “The crate originally was carrying some antique pottery and silver being re-patriated, or whatever the Canadians call it, they made up the word for their fake constitution, they don’t have one, you know, it’s a partnership agreement and Quebec, as is their unwavering and perhaps understandable policy when dealing with the rest of the provinces said **_Non_ ** – anyway, we can always use extra funds when running around the world rescuing people!”

“Oh! So is Peter on his way? Riding to the post-rescue party as though it was all his brilliance?” Neal was surprised to hear the resentment in his own voice, hadn’t realised that the last few months before the anklet debacle had affected him that much!

“No.” Mozzie fiddled with a book-mark. “I thought we should talk. When you’re feeling better, that is.”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this. Mozzie, what have you done?”

“Neal – well, by the way, you aren’t Neal, you are Alistair. Alistair Grey with an E. Your father was of Scottish descent.”

“Oh, am I! And who chose that?”

“Look, it’s kind of a long story and I don’t know that you’re up for it.”

“Trust me, I’m up for finding out stuff! I don’t know if it was Rebecca, Alex, Kramer, some friend of Kellar’s or who, and what for! Whether it was ransom or I’d be forced to participate in crimes against my will or what!”

“I can see that you might have thought it was Rebecca.”

“Except I wasn’t hurt and no-one taunted me or anything!”

“Canadians!”

“Yeah – but if some lunatic had been behind it, they wouldn’t have let a bunch of plaid-wearing, broom-wielding nice guys stop them from dismembering me!”

“It might all work out in our favour! Actually, Winnipeg has rather a lot of crime, you’d be surprised.”

“Relative to New York?”

“Um, no. Relative to the rest of Canada. Brooms?”

“Brooms…curling. They’re the best. They also have a lot of cold relative to the rest of Canada, if I recall. How does this …”

“Well, you disappeared. You were about to go straight, and they took away your freedom again, and then you wanted to run, disable the anklet or something. Get your freedom any way or how.

“Well, in essence, you’ve run. The last time I spoke to Peter it wasn’t very amicable…I know it wasn’t his choice to have you continue on working for the Bureau, but he **_is_** a Suit. And the Fed’s were glowering at June, even searched her place, and messed it up a bit – but only after she’d gone to the media. So it sure looked like revenge. I didn’t tell Peter that I had a lead on your whereabouts. I didn’t have any hard evidence to show him. I wasn’t even a hundred per cent sure you hadn’t run and left me to cover your tracks. Peter would be sure you’d only run with me, and if I was still there…”

 

“Mozzie! I would have warned you, it would have been a plan set up between us…I know you can run a con just as well as I can!”

 

“Better, mon frère, much, much better! Well, all I told him was that I was taking June to Paris, she had been worried enough, about you, and his people had put her through enough and that he needn’t look for me when I returned, him and his stupid Bureau!”

 

“So Peter doesn’t know where I am.”

 

“Neal George Caffrey may as well have fallen into the East River and been washed out into the Bermuda Triangle! The search has been abandoned. Most of the LEO’s in the USA are less than interested. You had worked for the FBI, you’d just about finished your sentence, and had been doing great work for the good guys for years. If they knew it was a kidnapping they may have done more, but there really were very few leads or clues. If it hadn’t been for the whole anklet thing, they wouldn’t have even bothered looking for you at all.

“Thousands of adult Americans just fade out of their lives every year. Unless there’s blood, or a ransom demand or something, they are just thought to have chosen to move on. In your case, with the decision handed down by the Bureau, the common consensus is that you took your own life in a moment of depression – which June and I expressed to be our opinion, as it made the bastard at the top look the worst – or that you’d just had enough and run.”

 

“ The currents all flow the wrong way for the Bermuda Triangle….”

 

“When it comes to strange and unexplainable areas where the normal laws of physics don’t apply, I don’t think we need worry about a few currents that **_normally_** flow in other directions.”

 

“And Peter wouldn’t have believed that I’d commit suicide. I don’t think,” Neal mused.

 

“No. He told me I was mad, that you were a survivor and would fight to the bitter end. I told him that you’d lost a great deal over the last few months…firstly the treasure, Rebecca, your trust in Elizabeth and him, what you thought of as his friendship and affection, and then your freedom. That’s a lot to lose in a short time. Having nothing to look forward to, no real hope….He shut up.”

 

“Mozzie, that wasn’t fair.”

 

“It was true.”

 

“Yes, I suppose it was.” Neal stroked the delightedly writhing Becky.

 

Mozzie looked at the cat. “Becky, huh? Beautiful and all hidden claws.”

 

“I asked for a woman and they gave me a cat.”

 

“Perhaps the Canadians have as sharp a sense of humour as all their exports to Hollywood…after all…”

 

“Don’t say it. I promised Becky I wouldn’t.” Mozzie made huffing noises. “So who did our papers…who are you? Is June in on this?”

 

“I am Ian Carmichael. The person who did our new identities is a true expert. A maestro! June is in on this, but hasn’t changed her name. She plans to go back soon. No-one knows she’s here!”

 

“Where are we, Ian?” Neal asked, leaning back and pulling back the curtain. All he could see was a pretty garden bathed in sunshine.

 

“A group of cottages owned by an off-shore company founded by Alistair Grey, your father.”

 

“Where is this father of mine?” Neal asked, apprehensively. “Fathers haven’t been my good luck charms in the past.”

 

“I told you it was a long story…well, June knows this lady. Neighbour of hers! How she kept her a secret all these years…and why…I don’t know. If you meet her, she looks like a tiny little huisvrou. She called herself Gertrude when she spoke to me, but I have a feeling she has answered to more names than a millipede has legs. She’s a little like Hetty, NCIS LA? Only far more wholesome and harmless-looking! She looks as though she might be mildly bothered about not being able to remember her social security number…”

 

“Not the real Gertrude?”

 

“She’s apparently, from the teeny clues I gleaned, a kingmaker. Or, more regularly, a diplomat maker. She has been inserting people into diplomatic circles, mostly Italy, France, the UK, Australia, some Germany for longer than both of us have been alive. Calling her politically astute is like saying that Toronto’s present mayor is a mildly unusual public servant.”

 

“And she lived next door to June?”

 

“And you. Yes. And the regularly visiting FBI, by the way.”

 

“Gosh, if Peter’d ever got a whiff of that…”

 

“Mrs Suit would have been Widow Suit.”

 

“Oh, so not just a paper pusher?”

 

“Byron –er – planted certain people around them to protect them both, and then June after he’d picked the locks on the pearly gates, as the song says. Gertrude came into his life rather too late to help him with his incarceration problems, but did a great deal for him, later. He gave her a lovely home. If Gertrude lifts the veil a little, a man of great perspicacity - ”

 

“One Ian Carmichael.”

 

“As you say - gets a quick glimpse of a brain, a mind, a spirit of unsurpassed strength and virtuosity.”

 

 

“Not an assassin, though? I don’t think I could stand another…”

 

“She will do whatever it takes to help herself, June, and any of ‘her people’…we became ‘her people’ because of June’s love and trust of us about a month into your stay next door to her. We just didn’t know it.”

 

“She has other people?”

 

“Yep. All her political plants. And their families. And other contacts. If they don’t help each other, when required, she cuts them out of the will, shall we say. If it’s self-serving or for no good reason, she might sever more than their inheritance.”

 

“It’s okay for you to tell me all this?” Neal asked, sitting up a little.

 

“Yes. We are deep in her debt at present.”

 

“That doesn’t sound good!”

 

“No, no…since we came in on June’s coat-tails, we get pretty much a free ride. She doesn’t ask for much from most of her people. One day she might ask you to forge something, paint something, break into somewhere. For us to run a con. Nothing we haven’t done before. And apparently if someone does something for her and things go wrong, especially through no fault of their own, she will move heaven and earth to save them and get them a new start.”

 

“So she manipulates things for her benefit around the world? If you look at the state the world’s in, I’m not sure I agree with her idea of 'good'.…”

 

“She’s not that interested in the US’s foreign policy or the world price of mangoes, unless one of her people is being hurt. If we had been ‘her people’ when Burke caught you, you would have been freed within hours. She snarked at me when I told her what you went through.”

 

“I snark, too. Waste of years of my life!”

 

“She makes us look like complete amateurs, Alistair. Innocents. Mere babes.”

 

“Always ready to learn!”

 

“That’s what she liked about me – I was captivated and humbled, and told her so unreservedly. All her life is a tapestry of long cons, all running simultaneously, she pulls a thread there, adds another there.”

 

“She’s prepared to share?”

 

“Not sure about that yet. June never asked her about that, just mentioned a problem now and then.”

 

“And the problem became less of a problem?”

 

“E-evaporated. Oh, and Byron and then June has used her as a fence now and then all through the years…she is brilliant, Alistair!”

 

“Grey.”

 

“What?”

 

“Call me Grey. British, public schools, often use surnames. I like Grey.”

 

“You have it. But she’s brilliant because…”

 

“Diplomatic pouches!” Neal’s thousand watt grin lit the room.

 

“She just grinned like a goblin when I got it…you got it faster! Exactly. She has people who owe her their careers, their fathers owed her their careers. They’ll move anything for her. She doesn’t move a huge number of things, and she doesn’t follow any pattern, so it’s been impossible for the authorities – so called authorities! – to catch on.”

 

“How’d she get started? It’s a fantastic plan, but she must have been at it for many decades.”

 

Mozzie inspected his fingernails. “I believe it is a family business. She didn’t say so, but something about it…you know there are all these conspiracies, we can trace them back for certain to the French Revolution, they have documents – it isn’t a bunch of rubbish as the media would like you to think.”

 

“No, I know. I’m not sure all your theories are correct, all the conspiracies, but I know enough are true to be horrifically frightening.”

 

“That’s why it’s okay to be a crook, Grey. Because almost all if not all the politicians and corporate heads and especially those supra nationals such as the WHO and the World Bank…bad guys with huge power and no ombudsmen watching! All seem to have principles for sale! Anyway, at some time in the past…I don’t know how distant…people such as our lady friend decided that the tables were crooked and the dice were loaded and they were not going to lie down and take it, so they started infiltrating. Doing their own string-pulling. Their whole plan is to make it possible for people, their people, to live good lives despite the evil out there.”

 

“So we have good new ID’s, money – how? Surely June didn’t sell - ”

 

“June didn’t sell anything.”

 

“Oh, good. What are these people we have now become? Not still-borns! That always seems so – I don’t know - ”

 

“No. Grey, there are millions of people who go missing all over the world. Sometimes they change their names for perfectly good reasons which become redundant…so an Ian Carmichael becomes John Smith to hide from his former wife Suzie Carmichael. Time passes and Suzie dies. John is happy with his life, he doesn’t go to the bother of changing back. Ian Carmichael is a perfect alias for someone, especially if John Smith dies, too, with his alias intact.

“Sometimes, as in our cases, it’s more drastic. You heard about the property crimes in Zimbabwe, Kenya, some in South Africa where the government so-called soldiers took away people’s farms?”

 

“Yeah, no recompense. Often the family had built up the land for generations.”

 

“Yeah, and it wasn’t black on white, because there may have been one white family living on the farm and owning it, but thirty black families had been working on the farm for generations, too, had a school and houses and shops and everything – those people could have taken over and run the farm with some hope of success. But it was never given to them, it was given to the goons with guns while the good black families were also shoved out with nothing. And there were black families who owned farms they’d built up in their own right, they were ‘displaced’, too. They didn’t even get any press.

“People are fed quite a lot of rubbish by the media almost everywhere, very little truth…of course, every story has six sides, and each case is individual, but mostly people are fed one version and the populace aren’t trained to analytical thinking.”

 

“Yes…?”

 

“Well, some of the white families got out with practically nothing. Ended up in a dirty flat in some row house in England eating cat food. Others, not so lucky. Depending on how you look at it, I guess. They just disappeared. No death certificates, probably an unmarked grave at best.”

 

“Oh!”

 

“Yes, perfectly good identities, good families, with good reputations in most cases. These weren’t the ones who made a quick buck and left as soon as there was trouble. These were families who had made a home, just like people in America.”

 

“And we’re using some white African men’s names?”

 

“Yeah. Lots and lots of black men went just as missing, millions in those conflicts, you understand, but it would be harder for us to sell Tembe Mufulosa or Obert Mpila or something. We could have had our pick. Most labourers, so less useful to us, but some very successful businessmen, too, teachers, lawyers.”

 

“So Gertrude just collects identities for when someone needs them?”

 

“Exactly. She has people all over the world. Heck, in a few years, it may be safe for someone to become Neal Caffrey, lost in the East River!”

 

Neal sat and thought. “It’s kind of nice,” he said, at last. “We’re keeping the family alive.”

 

“She has research…we are not going to suddenly be confronted with a second cousin or ex wife, but school friends and so on are harder to keep track of when so many families just left that whole region as communism and lack of order came about, in such a short time.”

 

“She has our bio’s? We should at least learn the geography, medical history and so on.”

 

“She has all that.”

 

“Thank you, Mozzie.”

 

“For what?”

 

“Everything, including re-kidnapping me. But for teaching me how to become someone else at the drop of a proverbial Fedora.”

 

“Yes, about that…no Fedoras, okay?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“For a while at least. New persona.”

 

“Can I get some clothes and take a walk? I would like to see June – she’s here? – and meet this wonder woman, and get some sunshine!” Neal was still a little shaky, but they wandered gently round the garden. The house in which Neal had awakened was a three-bedroom stone cottage with a deep thatch roof. Around it stood about half-an-acre of garden, fenced. The fences all were lined with tall trees and truly huge rhododendron and azalea plants, all in full bloom. There was a wall next to the nearest road, a narrow tar affair that petered out opposite the last driveway. Between his house and the neighbours on either side was a small gate.

 

“That one’s mine,” Mozzie said, waving his hand, “and the one on the far side of yours is June’s. Then there’s another set of flats, sort of granny-flats, I think they’d call them, where June’s maid and so on are living. A cook, a gardener. The Grey’s used to bring some of their servants from Africa on vacation, enough so they all had time off and experienced this quite different world! Then there’s a vegetable garden, chicken coop but no chickens at present, and an area of woodland. You should have seen the bluebells! It’s past their time now.”

 

“And Gertrude bought all this for us…gave it to us because of June?”

 

“Oh, no! Not at all! When I said in her debt I didn’t mean financially! No, we are good! But she didn’t need to help us at all with her expertise, and she did!”

 

“She’s staying with June?”

 

“Yes. You’ll like this place…there’re caves and passageways, and the seas are so dangerous, dreadful currents, but they built a swimming pool down in the cove. It’s big and at a very high tide the waves wash in. The seas are so blue! I’ve never spent any time here…it’s lovely.”

 

“So this is all legally mine?” Neal asked, in wonderment.

 

“Under your control. All legal and aboveboard.” Mozzie did a plummy accent, “Grey, Alistair Grey, Esquire!”

 

Neal laughed. “I’m still a bit shaken and stirred. Wow! One minute I’m a prisoner of the FBI and their fake justice, then I’m a captive with a kitten and a rhino in a pot-shop in Winnipeg, then I’m the son of a successful farmer in – somewhere in East or Central Africa – and have come to our English estate with my friends.”

 

“You have got to tell me about the - ”

 

“Alistair!” June called, as they reached her side of Neal’s garden. They hurried over, went through the little gate, under the arch of blooming roses in all colours of peach and orange and gold, sweet-smelling old fashioned roses. She grabbed Neal in a hug and he hugged her back. “I have missed you! I wanted to leave you to recover, but it’s been hard not to burst in on you!”

 

“I hear I have you to thank for my rescue and my new holdings?” he said, kissing her. He caught a glance between June and Mozzie.

 

“No, sweet boy, I just made some introductions! Ian handled the dangerous end, I think, my friend handled the – er – details – and I just had the great, great pleasure of insulting the Director of the FBI every time I opened my mouth and impeding an FBI investigation, as it turns out!” She led them over to some Muskoka chairs around a wooden slatted table, all painted white, where a tea-tray was set out. A tiny woman came trotting out of a house similar to Neal’s with a tray full of scones with butter, clotted cream and gooseberry and raspberry jellies in bowls. She saw them and smiled and Mozzie took the tray and put it down.

 

“June,” she said, “the oven reads about fifteen percent hotter than it is! Just remember!

“Now you must be Alistair!”

 

She took Neal’s hand and shook it and he touched hers to his lips. “I believe I have a great deal to thank you for…for myself but also because you looked after my beloved June all these years?” Neal said, smiling with his eyes.

 

“Oh, June,” she said to her friend, taking her hand back, “I do see what you mean! You, young man, are dangerous!” Neal glanced at Mozzie, who was grinning. Moz was right. She did the brainless blonde (going a little grey) Ladies’ Aid matron to a T. They sat and ate and drank and breathed in the fresh, healthy air of a contented garden. It smelt nothing like New York. Neal sighed a little. He wished he could have experienced his New York life without the tracker and without the FBI, but there you are.

 

“There are big changes going to be happening, Alistair,” Gertrude said, reading him like tea-leaves. “It may be possible for you to return sooner than you think at present. But don’t be precipitate, I beg you.”

 

“Is the UK the best place to hide out, ma’am?” Neal asked. “I was always a little shy of the plethora of cameras here.”

 

“It sounds as though you need to rest a little, get fit, that sort of thing. That would be good. Down here, with all the trees, out in the country, you are totally safe. I would rather you didn’t make too public a splash for a few months. Unfortunately you are a distinctive type, distinctive bones with a distinctive walk.”

 

“I can change some of that.”

 

“And we will. Brown contacts, fair hair, a limp perhaps, rubber facial overlay to hide those gorgeous cheek-bones. Sorry, but we need to keep you out of prison and off all that radar for at least a year.” Neal winced. “That’s here, my boy! And no museums or art galleries! But if you get bored I can always use your talents in less-watched locations, and there are many places the FBI will not be looking for you. Places with extradition treaties, for example, like the UK, but less recorded than every alley here. Places they won’t think you’d go.

“And that’s the worst case scenario. As Ian has probably told you, I have many different ways of skinning a cat, don’t tell your kitten I said that! I have already put things in motion.”

 

Neal looked up interrogatively, cream on his nose, and she laughed. “No, no, I won’t tell you till it happens. I hate to disappoint!”

 

Becky at that moment discovered where her friend had gone and came mewing over the grass looking exasperated. “I’m sorry, Becky-love,” Neal told her, “but you had disappeared. I think you were out catching mice!” June promptly took her own Royal Albert Yellow Roses saucer and poured a mixture of milk and cream into it and put it on the grass by her foot. The cat stuck her nose into it and lapped happily. “So do you have an idea who took me?” Neal asked. “At all? What if I’m still in danger of being taken again?”

 

“Mozzie dealt with the hired muscle,” Gertrude said, smiling a lovely matronly smile with, to the experienced con-man eye, shards beneath, “but I believe there is no more threat, Alistair.”

 

“I like Grey, if it’s all the same to you both,” Neal said.

 

Gertrude put her head on one side. “Mm. Good call. I like it. Grey, then.” She looked up into the leafy canopy above them and went on, “I don’t like anyone threatening my people. I wish I had known you before you were caught, Grey. But one of the falsehoods about the world is that things can be irreversible. I don’t believe in insurmountable boundaries. They are usually a bunch of cowards desperately holding up a cardboard wall.

“Although, young man, you truly asked to be captured, from all reports! Sloppy, appallingly sloppy!”

 

Mozzie grinned a little and Neal reddened. Mozzie said, “It was for love, ma’am.”

 

“Pooh!” she said, spooning raspberry jelly on a mound of cream adorning her scone. “Love is a wonderful, sustaining gift, Ian! It doesn’t make someone foolish and neglectful and stupid! That’s not love!”

 

“I have since come to agree with you, ma’am,” Neal admitted, ruefully. “I’m just not good at seeing how stupid I’m being right at the time I fancy myself in love!”

 

“Rachel,” Gertrude said, solemnly, “was not a foolish mistake on your part, Grey.”

 

Neal jumped. “You know about Rachel?”

 

“One of the very best. She could almost fool God – don’t take it hard that she conned you! After all, it wasn’t only that she was extremely good at what she did, you were hung out to dry for someone such as her: young, trapped, lonely.

“I used her on occasion, but she was damaged and nothing seemed able to bring her back. If it wasn’t for all the mess she got herself into with Hagen and the investment she made into the long con you might have been able to save her. She just couldn’t walk away from all that outlay.”

 

“But she was a murderer!”

 

“Originally she was an excellent all-round agent. But by the time you met her, she wanted one big score to prove herself. The FBI man - ”

 

“David Siegel,” Neal said, his voice hard. “I knew him. He was a good man.”

 

“He would have used you and thrown you back in prison if you sneezed wrong. His threw back his previous CI because he had no support, no June or Mozzie, and no money for food and stole a hundred dollars from a drug bust worth quarter of a million that Siegel would never have made without him.

“That young man died less than three months later in a pool of blood in his cell and I’ll bet Siegel never knew. However, I suppose he was trying to live by bureaucratic rules. Your poor sap, Burke, was trying to do the same and be fair and just and probably gave himself ulcers!

“We think Rachel might have got rid of him because of all the time and effort she’d put into the con. Unlikely, but possible. It was the act of a moment. It might not even have been Rachel…Hagen could have easily set her up for that. But Hagen…”

 

“There was a fingerprint on a cartridge in the murder weapon…”

 

“Don’t waste my time, Grey! You know as well as I that transferring fingerprints is child’s play now. They will probably become obsolete.

“Then Hagen…”

 

“Hagen stopped being of use to her.”

 

“Hagen could have been of immense use to her, Grey. He couldn’t have tried to implicated her without implicating himself. He had nothing on her. She’s an expert!

“She shot him because he was about to turn you in, in a fit of spite and to get himself off the hook - give your handler the video and frame you for everything…she got rid of him and all the evidence. He would have done it, too. Framed you for the gold, the window, Chapter 13, the painting, even Siegel’s murder if he could. He hated you for spoiling his great bond forgery caper. And of course, because of your feelings for the Burkes, you actually **_had_** done most of that.”

 

“So the thumb drive she gave me…?”

 

“Nothing on it. We collected it and checked. Son, you know that just standing on a thumb drive and breaking the casing is not going to erase the data! I think you’re right, love is not a good look on you!”

 

Neal looked abashed, then said, “We found the gun that we thought Rachel had used on Siegel…”

 

“Oh, I know, dear. After she shot Hagen. He might have realised that Siegel had seen him hanging around there and it was too good a chance to miss. I believe he shot Siegel and wrote the name of her building on one if his cards and put it in his wallet. He’s a forger, after all…Then he deliberately tossed the gun close by with Rachel’s prints planted on it a little while later after all the emergency responders had left. He could always tell the FBI about her, about the gun, and use that as leverage. Or, if he chose, he could claim that you’d shot Siegel and dumped the gun in the river.

“Finding the receipt, that was **_your_** insight. If Hagen hadn’t been shot, had given them his evidence, they would have been sure all the rest was you, you wouldn’t have found the receipt he had of him sitting drinking coffee while watching Rachel! You’d have been prettying up some cell somewhere.” Neal gazed at her. “I don’t know this for sure, you understand, Grey. It might have been Rachel. The first reason I doubt it was her was that it was unnecessary. She could have moved even if Siegel had found her. I don’t think he did…I think he saw Hagen coming from a meeting with you.

“Siegel didn’t have anything on Rachel because she hadn’t done anything obviously illegal. She had collected information and kept FBI folks under surveillance, but he couldn’t know that even if he did see Hagen watching her building! We know he didn’t enter it, because he would have called it in!

“Then there’s the fingerprint. A fingerprint! On a cartridge! In a gun used in a murder! Come on, Grey…you know now how organised and detail-oriented Rachel was…can you see her leaving a fingerprint on a cartridge?”

 

“We had a lot of time to talk while Mozzie was trying to find you, dear,” June said. “Gertrude wanted to make sure you were worth helping, when you’d turned on Rachel.”

 

“And I keep a finger on the pulse much of the time. If there hadn’t been a mess in the Middle East involving some of my people, I might have pulled you out sooner, for June’s sake. And her love for you might actually have been the saving of Rachel, I had hopes…so sad!”

 

“I thought it was all a con. You think she really did have feelings for me?”

 

“Oh, without a doubt! But the habit of self-preservation, when she was put under such pressure and it seemed you had turned on her – well, it was too much for her, Grey.”

 

“I did turn on her. I – I don’t like violence.”

 

“Mm. Depends on circumstances,” said the dear little lady sitting dabbing crumbs off her plate.

 

“Not usually,” Neal said, hesitantly, not wanting to offend.

 

“Don’t be naive, dear,” she looked at him, and under the fluffy hair her eyes were suddenly like an eagle’s. “If you had the choice of killing Kate’s murderer and preventing the explosion…?”

 

“I’d have done it. I wouldn’t have liked doing it, or wanted to, but if that was my choice, yes. Of course.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“But not for money or for convenience.”

 

She smiled gently at him. “There are usually better ways, I agree. I like to believe that most people are redeemable. But they’d better not get in our way till they are. I knew Rachel’s father and mother, you know. Even now, I wish I could help her.” She sighed. “She came so close, with you. Prison will break whatever hope is left.”

 

“Yes, it will,” Neal said, sadly.

 

“It was all a total mess, I’m afraid.”

 

“If Neal, Rebecca and I had found the diamond and escaped from New York, you think we’d have been safe?” Mozzie demanded. “Or do you think Rachel would have emerged sole owner and two strangers’ bodies would have been found floating in the Seine or the Po or some other body of water?”

 

“An interesting conundrum,” Gertrude grinned. “One we shall never solve. Because, Ian, we can predict the movements of electrons, tiny specks of matter and/or energy we can not see at all. We can predict when a certain star will implode with some accuracy. But human nature? Especially a complex, conflicted woman such as Rachel, experiencing romantic love and stability for the first time? It is mere speculation.”

 

“Somehow, ma’am, I’d rather not bet my life on something quite so random,” Mozzie said with decision.

 

“Neal and Rachel were hurt, Mozzie. You had no horse in that race.”

 

“I don’t play Hearts, ma’am. Not my game at all!”

 

“Well, it is all moot now. We move forward.”

 

“Will you try and help Rachel, ma’am?” Neal asked. “I would rather know where she is and perhaps not be anywhere near that location.”

 

“I may try and find a better facility for her, Grey. For her father’s sake.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Neal took the path Mozzie showed him and made his way down the steep and winding path, stopping often just to drink in the gorgeous views of blue seas and white foam, dark rocks and the azure sky arching over it all. It felt almost as though he was standing on the edge of the world! The energising smell of the sea filled his lungs and when he licked his lips he could taste the salt. In some areas steps had been cut into the path, but much of it was quite treacherous and only wide enough for one. In fact, his brain noted, rather defendable if the need arose. He soon could see the swimming pool. It was sizeable! The sides were local rock and concrete. He wanted to swim and think…or not think. It had always been one of his favourite activities when the world around him seemed overwhelming.

 

_Mozzie got it right! My partner incarcerated because of a murder my father committed. I get him out by making a deal with one of the devil’s underlings, Hagen, and I get stuck working not only as a slave for the FBI, but for this bozo as well…then a light shines on my life and I find Rebecca, while my relationship with Peter and El deteriorates, climaxing when Peter just loses it with me for saving him!_

_I don’t know if Peter’s going to go crazy and turn both of us in, and then Hagen is caught and declares he’s going to put me away for the rest of this century, he’s killed, my lover is suddenly the chief suspect, she’s been stalking all of us, we’re not sure exactly why, and she turns out to be a British spook-and-gook and gets put inside and tried for two murders. I want my sentence gone, Peter’s at first dubious, then he signs off but the Director nixes it because I’m too ‘useful’, then I decide to take my freedom,_

_I’m kidnapped, re-kidnapped, find I have a new name and a new friend who could take on Hagen, Kellar, Fowler, Kramer, stuff-shirt Burke and Rachel all together with both hands tied behind her narrow upright back, and I get a small housing estate in Cornwall. I need a calm and restful swim. I don’t think I can take much more. If stress is indeed a killer, if change is stressful, I must have more lives than Becky!_

 

He slipped into the water, not sure of the depth. It was quite cold though the sun had warmed it. He groaned with delight and set out across the length of the pool. Soon he was just letting his brain tick over without effort as he went from stroke to stroke…butterfly, then breaststroke then settled into crawl, back and forth, back and forth. As he reached the path-side of the pool, someone was waiting for him. He realised and stopped, drifting towards the rocks.

Becky was moving from side to side right on the very edge, leaning toward him, yowling. “It’s okay, pet, I’m not drowning! I’m a human, we like water! Really!” She leaned further, anxiety in every hair. He wondered for a moment if the little cat would actually jump in, perhaps thinking he needed saving, but no. He went to the side and she immediately sprang onto his shoulder.

“Oh, oh, Becky! Ow! Ow! That’s my skin you’re puncturing!” He managed to put his towel round his neck and not without some difficulty he got her on top of the towel. “Little monster! You’re more like my girlfriend than a cat has a right to be! Trying to save me, according to my new source, and just about doing me in! And if I was stupidly wearing a jacket, you’d have ruined it, too!”

 

He made his way back up the path. Wow! The climb down, the swim and the climb back was going to be a great daily work-out! He looked forward to finding out about Alistair Grey, Senior and Junior. They must have been interesting people to have chosen or built this place. He was obviously still recovering from the entrapment and the drugs, because he was drowsy through dinner and fell asleep immediately afterwards.

_It’s okay! I have to lay low for a year! I have time to sleep and feel better!_

 

Over the next week he read his files, and Mozzie’s files and found he had to do quite a bit of research, just in case. Alistair Greys had both been rugby and cricket enthusiasts, and though he had a vague knowledge, if someone came up and started talking about scrums and tries and lbw’s, Lara and Tandulker, he was going to be exposed very quickly. They had both also played tennis and swum, but he knew enough about those and the sports world-wide to hold his own. This was the first time his alias had been born and bred in Africa…sixth generation African, and though the culture was somewhat English, the climate, the crops they grew, their ethos was unique.

Something in common with the independent Americans, something in common with the Aussies, but still, it was a small population with a great many cross-linkings. Just not remembering a much-despised politician, an in-joke or a deadly snake could tip off someone from the region, or even someone who had read up on the region.

 

He and Mozzie sat under the trees and studied. He sometimes looked up, upon hearing a bird he didn’t recognise, or to let his eyes rest, and smiled a little at Peter’s naiveté in thinking that just ‘becoming someone else’ was so easy. “Do you have the map of Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1970?” he asked Mozzie. “I visited relatives - the Suttons - there and stayed two months. In…um…Greendale. Kamfinsa to be exact.”

 

“Here,” said Mozzie, handing it over and looking over his University transcript. “What do you know about geology?”

 

“Not very much if it doesn’t involve precious and semi-precious stones and those found in relation to them, or good stones to sculpt, I’m afraid. Are you a major?”

 

“No, minored in it.”

 

“Why? Was it a hobby? After all, most students forget a lot of what they learned to pass exams, unless it is a pet interest.”

 

“I’d better pick up a book. If he remembers anything it will be about the local rocks and structures, and some basics, I should think. There’s nothing in the bio about it being a hobby, but the file is huge as it is.”

 

“Get to town via Rhodes and then Jameson Avenue East…” Neal said, tracing routes on the map. **_Roots_** _not **rowtes**_ **!** _Anglican Cathedral there – I might have gone to a wedding, just attended, probably not, where’s the local church? Ground floor, first floor, second, unless there’s a mezzanine…pavement not sidewalk, car’s have glove compartments and boots and bonnets – and hooters! – and I haven’t started to get my head around the schooling…kindergarten, standards one through…no to five, then form one to something…oh, boy!_

 

“Went tiger fishing on Lake Kariba. Do you think I can pull off being a fisherman? Seriously? Especially of something as dangerous-sounding as a tiger fish?” Mozzie demanded, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes.

 

“They’re smaller in Kariba, or they were. The really big ones that have been known to bite humans…but not fatally, just nasty – they’re in Lake Victoria. Now the Kariba ones might have grown, but probably not, protein shortages common.”

 

“But me, on a boat, in a lake with crocodiles – big ones! Seriously!”

 

“Less dangerous than hippos, but neither much problem in the middle of the lake. Neither is bilharzia, by the way, already read up on it…only dangerous in the shallows because of snails, the alternate host.”

 

“Malaria is worse! And tropanosomiasis! And speaking of hippos - ”

 

“Malaria wasn’t much of a problem during the time we’re reading about. They eradicated the anopheles mosquito in much of these countries.”

 

“Using DDT!” Mozzie shuddered.

 

“Amongst other things. And sleeping sickness – or the flies that carried it – how do you say this? Tze-tze? It looks Chinese! - were isolated to the very hot areas, but you’re right. In the Zambezi Valley you’d have had to be aware of them.”

 

“All these biting, killing things – insects, black mambas, cobras, lions, scorpions! - and they survived perfectly. Ian contracted the usual children’s illnesses, and broke his femur riding a bike when he was twelve, broke a toe being trodden on by a horse. Otherwise, totally healthy other than the odd cold and ’flu!”

 

“Same here! Measles, mumps – no, he never did get mumps! I shall have to be aware of that – glandular fever when he went to boarding school, chicken pox, sprained ankle, broke three fingers catching a cricket ball headed for the boundary for six …no gloves! Hard as nails these guys!”

 

“All the dangers they survived, and then were disarmed by the government and killed by a bunch of poorly trained angry militants!”

 

“At least they died on their own soil.”

 

“You watched Blood Diamond again, didn’t you?”

 

“Need to get the accent, and he got great reviews for not over-doing it.”

 

“You know, we should take up acting!”

 

“Horribly difficult career and at the whim of producers and financiers and all the crap. No, thank you. Even with the FBI they didn’t usually tell me exactly what to say! And hard to make good money unless you are a di Caprio.”

 

Mozzie peered at him, his eyes a little reddened. “You could make it, you have the looks. What am I going to play? A rag-n-bone man?”

 

“Not in Africa, you wouldn’t!”

 

“No, I guess not. And we’d have to go to Hollywood, the pay is dreadful in the UK.”

 

“Still no rag-n-bone men. More consistent work, though, in the UK, I believe.

“I’m taking a rest.”

 

“Improv. Then no-one would be telling you what to say.”

 

They carefully covered all the papers with plastic and stood up to stretch. They had once had a heron fly over an important map. It hadn’t been pretty. June had apparently been watching them and the two ladies brought out tea and snacks.

 

“Pancakes!” Neal exclaimed. “I didn’t ask for them when I was a hostage, I didn’t know I was in Canada!”

 

“These are not pancakes, Grey. These are flapjacks. Grey would have called these flapjacks, what you call crepes, crepes, and something a little thicker and softer than crepes, but the same sort of size and rollable, that would have been pancakes. And about scones, and biscuits and candy and sweets, puddings and dessert…”

 

“I shall just say I’m diabetic and never eat sugar!” Neal joked. “There are so many little things…”

 

“You have to at least call things by their English name, dear,” Gertrude told him. “Because you’ve lived in English countries, not in the USA.”

 

“Couldn’t I move to Canada?”

 

“No, too close, sorry – and more than half the Canadians use the English equivalent for things, anyway!”

 

"He could be one of the Canucks who got sat on by the neighbouring elephant,” Mozzie joked, “and succumbed to Americanisms. Oh, talking of elephants, I must hear about - ”

 

“Here’s Becky! She can smell milk a mile away, I do declare!” June said. “But Grey, she got on the table and ate a chocolate biscuit.”

 

“Biscuit…cookie? … ** _biscuit!”_** Neal remembered.

 

“But chocolate is deadly for animals, I believe!”

 

They looked at Becky, who jumped on Neal’s lap and started to clean her face, first with a long pink tongue and then her licked paws. “She doesn’t seem to have read the same books you read! Or there wasn't that much chocolate in the biscuit.”

 

“Amazing animals! Perfectly adapted!” Mozzie enthused.

 

“I wouldn’t think you’d like cats,” Neal said. “I’m sure I’ve heard you say - ”

 

“I wouldn’t **_have_** a cat. But if I had to **_be_** something other than human, a mammal, anyway, I’d be a cat. Survivors!”

 

“I agree! I love them.”

 

“Yeah. If you’d been a cat, with a nasty owner like Burke the Jerk, you’d have slipped that little blinking collar and found another owner who showered you with treats and cream and downy cushions to sleep on. Quietly, on padded paws, slipped away…”

 

“I like dogs, too,” June said.

 

“But dogs will lick the hand that feeds them rubbish and crawl to an abusive master for some affection!” Mozzie said. He looked speculatively at Neal. “I think I see a resemblance! Now what? A Labrador? Very friendly. Nice toothy smile!”

 

“Hey! A German Shepherd, if I was going to be a dog!”

 

“Not a stereo-typed pit-bull, sadly,” Mozzie mourned. “You could have taken a nice big bite out of the Bureau’s ass. Or at least taken out the seat of your Suit’s dreadful pants!”

 

Neal made a face. “He wasn't that bad...he was often very good to me - and, Mozzie - !”

 

June laughed. “Don’t be silly, Ian. If he was a dog, what’s his strong point? He can run! So a greyhound…haha, now he’s just Grey! Or a saluki.”

 

“They’re beautifully architectural,” Neal nodded.

 

“And he went after Kate just like a greyhound after a fluffy, fake rabbit, round and round, mindlessly…!”

 

“I think you’re being mean to me!” Neal pouted. “I was just kidnapped! Twice!”

 

“Sorry, Grey!” Mozzie grinned.

 

“So I should think! Can I have another flapjack, dear June?”

 

“You should eat and eat and lose that whippitish figure!” Gertrude suggested. “You’ll be less recognisable!” Neal looked at her in horror. She went on, “The search for Neal Caffrey has been all but abandoned. Burke was told if he wanted to keep his job he’d have to accept the official version and stop fretting over it. His wife is in DC, renting an apartment. Hughes retired – again – and has gone fishing in some stream in the interior of British Columbia. Off the Fraser. He may be following a lead, I’ll have my people keep an eye on him.”

 

“So Peter stayed in New York?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“He wanted that DC job. And he and El will be apart, how horrid.”

 

“Don’t be maudlin and Labradorish!” Mozzie said. “Or Bloodhoundish. Or even worse – Beddlington Terriorish! Be strong and aloof and German Shepherdish!”

 

“Woof!” Neal said. Becky glanced at him and jumped down.

 

“I hope I haven’t gone to a lot of trouble to save your scrawny behind, Grey, only to have you destroy all our hard work!” Gertrude said, sternly.

 

“No, ma’am,” Neal shook his head. “I am very glad I have my freedom. But they were good to me, according to their lights. I would like them to be happy.”

 

“Not your business, not any more!”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

Gertrude went indoors after finishing her tea to make contacts with her various people. She was a little concerned about Neal. His heart always got him into trouble! But she’d done what she could…if he messed it all up, he was on his own.

 

June took out some embroidery and unrolled a piece of white cloth pierced with about fifteen needles threaded with different coloured yarns. She took up the hoop and selected a colour.

 

“Mozzie, you said we weren’t beholden to Gertrude for money.” Mozzie and June shared a ‘here-it-comes’ glance, which Neal, leaning over to pick up Becky, missed.

 

“That’s right,” Mozzie nodded. “And my name is Ian, stupid!”

 

“Ouch!” Neal exclaimed. “I’m sorry!”

 

“Out of the game too long – you need to focus!”

 

“Will do!” Neal agreed, then, after a pause, “If June didn’t sell anything large and Gertrude isn’t fronting us for some reason, where did we get the money? I’ve been in the game enough to know that all this, especially Gertrude’s aliases and ID’s are all very expensive.”

 

“They are, Grey. But I assure you, we’re fine.”

 

“But because of me and the FBI you lost everything in the USA, and we lost half the treasure because of Kellar and a substantial amount more because of the island debacle, and I know we wanted to keep the favourites, those we couldn’t find the original owners for, and sell the others we couldn’t rehome, but that’s a drop in a large bath compared to these lives were stepping into.”

 

“Can I ask you to just not worry?”

 

Neal’s expression immediately became more worried. “M-Ian! What did you do?”

 

“He won’t leave it alone, dear,” June said. “He’ll get himself all tied around and do something stupid.”

 

“June, no! I wouldn’t! I’m not being disrespectful, love, but - ”

 

“We know you too well, Grey! All right! I’ll tell you. I think you’ll be happy – you should be happy – but - ”

 

“Ian! Just tell me what you did!”

 

“You know you said we shouldn’t steal the diamond…”

 

“After Peter had appropriated it for the Good Old USA – I guess Marconi **_did_** hide it on ground that was a military post and became a national landmark, so there was reason. And I don’t believe you did, after I told you not to – not because I told you I was out of the game, out of The Life - ”

 

“Yeah, looks that way, doesn’t it?” Mozzie smirked.

 

“ – hey, I was kidnapped! But you were still getting over being nearly made dead by an MI5 assassin!”

 

“Oh, no – you said you wanted your freedom, anyway, anyhow after seeing the Suit!”

 

“You’re right. Go on.”

 

“Well, you know there’s this saying about it being better to beg forgiveness than ask permission?”

 

“Mmhm?”

 

“Well, it’s sometimes easier to return something you decide you don’t want than not get it in the first place, if the occasion arises.”

 

“Just tell me what you did already!”

 

“The Smithsonian is setting up a lovely exhibit of the two diamonds. Hope, and they’ve called the other Faith. But you can call ours Charity.”

 

“What?”

 

“Our charity. The _**we’re-so-over-living-on-too-little-and-waiting-for-the-big-score charity**_ , to be exact.”

 

“M-Ian! How did you steal the thing! You didn’t have time! Who did you use? I left you to do this by yourself - ! I don’t believe Peter would let you get near the thing, even if you were feeling up to it…”

 

“He does get worked up, doesn’t he?” June asked, with a grin.

 

“He does.”

 

“All right – you obviously pulled it off. I am amazed and in awe and astounded! You are a genius of Gertrudian levels! You must have had the plan in place in case we did find the diamond…”

 

“I did! As soon as I knew what we were going after, I spent some of our diminishing reserves on a replica.”

 

“But no-one knew what – oh! Sorry!”

 

“I think those Canadians hit your head harder than you think they did! Exactly, no-one knew what it looked like, but I figured if we made a replica of the Hope, we couldn’t be too far off! You told me you’d told someone – probably the Suit, that they didn’t make replicas that good when Marconi had it…but they do now! And it may not have been any use, we may not have needed it, but I like to hope for the best and plan for the worst…and I am sadly often right!”

 

“So what happened?”

 

“Peter gave it to me.”

 

**_“WHAT!?”_ **

 

“You saw him do it. I was lying in the bed, drinking wine and he handed it to me. I even pretended to hide it! It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done since I stole Eddie Garbanzo’s switch-blade when I was six!

“He was a mean kid, twelve, and tall,” he said as an aside to the amused June. “I was quite proud.”

 

“B-but where did you have the copy?”

 

“I had it with me when we went on the treasure hunt. It was in my shoe. The heels were just a little thicker than I usually wear. Diamonds are not particularly comfortable, the hardness actually made itself felt, but neither of you noticed.”

 

“We were worried that you were dying, Ian!”

 

“Yes, that helped!”

 

“But your plan was…?”

 

“I was going to give it to you to give to Rebecca if we didn’t find the real one.

“I mean, I hoped we’d find the real one ourselves, having ditched the murderous red-head, but then things got complicated. She wanted the diamond and not one of you thought I might have had the foresight to get an alternate made! I couldn’t tell you with the Suit there with us all the time…but I took it, so if we hadn’t found the real thing and I was dying, you could have given her the fake. I mean, it’s as real as the real one, as it happens the colour is perfect…she couldn’t have known.”

 

“But why didn’t you give it to me to save your life? You passed out! If Diana and Jones hadn’t been so smart, you’d have died!”

 

“Yes. Apparently belladonna, at least in conjunction with a double malt whisky supplied by June before she knew I’d been poisoned, blurred by usually impeccable thought processes.”

 

“You had a diamond to give Rebecca and you forgot and nearly died!”

 

“You say it like it’s a bad thing!”

 

“I nearly lost my best friend!”

 

“I’m appreciative, but look what happened! The Suit thought I was too far gone, and had been near death, isolated in hospital and therefore not to be feared…they took my clothes and hung them up, picked up both shoes and put them in the closet. I just hammed my symptoms up once I felt a bit better, and got out of bed and opened the heel and got the diamond and took it into bed with me. Just in case. You never know!

“If you’d found the original while I was still with you at the fort, I would have palmed it to you to give Rebecca - but you did that with a mere piece of brick! - and you could have given me the real one and no-one the wiser.

“Well, Plan B had to take effect, since I kind of lost the thread and ended up in hospital, but the Suit was simultaneously kind enough to let me sniff financial freedom and cruel enough to remove it from our collective grasp almost instantly - but not quickly enough!

“I am thankful that whoever cut the two eyes was careful to match them pretty closely. The Suit didn’t have an iota of an idea that he handed me one stone and received another a moment later. After you left, I just snuck the real diamond into my heel and walked out wearing it! Hey, Michael Flatly had diamond-encrusted boots, Dorothy had her ruby slippers but trust me, **_no-one_ ** has had shoes more valuable than mine were that day!”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me when it was safe to do so?”

 

“Because you told me, before I had the chance, that you were giving up The Life! That you were going straight! No big fish or even whales – and I still have to ask you about something – but had that been the case, I would have had to go to Plan C, and just live The Life myself until you were bored with mediocrity and quiet desperation, and help you with small amounts of money to survive till then.”

 

Neal gazed at his friend. “You did all this alone.”

 

“At that point. Sorry, but you were so embroiled in evil girlfriends and evil bureaucracies, dying people here and there…you were not on your game, mon frère! I couldn’t let that stop me saving our big score, could I?”

 

“Oh, M-Ian! What on earth would we have done if you hadn’t! I can’t think!”

 

“You could have been rescued by that guy Mozzie, back in Canada, and gone back to being the FBI’s CI,” June said. “You could still, if you really want to give up The Life.”

 

“I could, couldn’t I?” Neal mused. “Peter’s in New York, I could just ask Gertrude to take me back to the US, put the Greys back on the shelf for someone else.”

 

“And when your stint is over, go straight?” Mozzie asked.

 

“No. I had a chance to think about it. Lots or free time! You’re right, Ian. There’s so much legal corruption and crime, which is why Mr and Mrs Average have a mortgage till they die and may go on a short vacation and take tinned beans so they can eat them for lunch and dinner – that’s not life! No-one should live like that. I don’t want to.

“I’ll miss New York. Perhaps I can go back after seven years, after I’m declared legally dead. By then no-one will care.” He sat in silence for quite a few moments and said, “Thank you for giving me my choices back, Ian and June. With Gertrude’s amazingly efficient help!”

 

“She’s unique, isn’t she? I haven’t used her often, but every time, when I am thinking something will be difficult or impossible I go to her and she does something so much higher and better than I could have imagined!”

 

“She moved the diamond? What did she get for you, Ian?”

 

“No, no! We’ve been a two-man team for a long time, you help me, I help you…it was for us, and for June, too, if she needed help at any time. She was always there for you, since you two met!”

 

“My little friend somehow not only got you the equivalent of just under a hundred million dollars,” June said, calmly starting another colour on her work, “but also made the deal with a patriot who is returning the stone secretly to the idol from which it was taken. It won’t be on display, at least until he gets the Hope, too, but we’ll all know it’s home. I think that will bring us all the good luck the Hope didn’t for her owners!”

 

Neal just stared at her, his blue eyes almost as huge and sparkling as the diamond. June grinned at his stunned delight. “We really have hit the Big Score, Ian, haven’t we?” he whispered. Mozzie just waved his hands and grinned.

 

“That’s why I’m making a very nice sampler for your living room, whenever you settle down,” June said. “Just to remind you of something Byron knew all along.” She loosened the frame and tugged the cloth straight so they could see the whole motto. To their utter delight it said:

 

**_“Great Fences make Great Neighbours.”_ **

 

They laughed and laughed for so long both Gertrude and Becky came to see what the jollification was about. It was only much later, after many wild and weird plans and ideas about how to spend their money and what freedom really looked like had been batted back and forth and much more fun had been had that they packed up and went in to get ready for dinner. June and Gertrude paused, watching Becky chase butterflies, and dallied in the garden.

 

“Mozzie,” whispered Neal as they reached the house, so softly even his friend right next to him could hardly hear the words, “one last question: you considered I was acting stupidly and that I was throwing my life away, and even when I said I wanted out in any way possible, I know you were always worried I’d keep destroying my chances because of my feelings for Peter and El, forgiving them over and again …did you have me kidnapped, by any chance?”

 

“That, mon frère, is a discussion for another day,” Mozzie hissed back, with resolution. “The real last question is this: they were told to give you everything you needed and wanted, within reason, but how the heck did the Canadians give you a rhino?”

 

 

 

The End

 

 

Comments and criticisms, please? Please!


End file.
